


Where I Once Dwelt

by kinkobra



Category: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Genre: Dragons, F/M, Reunion Sex, Size Difference, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-21 08:11:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14280717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinkobra/pseuds/kinkobra
Summary: The Kohaku River flows again, and when he goes to investigate, he finds Chihiro.





	Where I Once Dwelt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Burning_Nightingale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burning_Nightingale/gifts).



There is a place to go. It exists once again - his own place to go.

Kohaku River-god thought himself honest, despite the fact that his was not naturally an open heart – except when he was at his very best. If asked if he would have power, he would say yes, and that he would value, accept, or take it where opportunity arose. Once he had it, he would not bow the same way in his position at the bathhouse any longer, though it is now a position earned and respectable instead of a shackle forced upon him.

If asked if he was brave and hopeful, he might have said yes and only thought to doubt it later. A query against his courage would sound like a challenge, and would ignite his pride. The truth was that he considered himself capable, and could substitute that against a great many uncertainties.

If asked what he would do about his new knowledge of home, and of power, and of the unknown, he wouldn’t be able to answer. He wouldn’t be able to defend his choice to kneel on a woven mat and ignore that a certain strength has grown with him, unfamiliar with disuse.

Kohaku River-god, his name responds to the part of him that is weak. Impatient, clear, and rushing – it is irresistible. Questions no longer matter, as seasons shed from his memory, sloughing off like old skin. He is what he was and what he should have been, again.

His drained river flows: Water makes its pact with earth and roots, and feeds him, and needs him. Unstintingly it flows, catching the light of the sun in a new way and along a path not quite the same, but very similar. Source and flow, it draws him.

Zeniba shouts and thunders when he declares his need for time off. She smokes furiously with a pipe that sparks, and then waves him away. She can no longer hold him. And he – after long enough without power, he can’t take it for granted. He might have to come back to the bathhouse, and so the arrangement must be made, understanding reached between them.

Haku finds he does not mind his dependence on certainties more than hope. He goes to bid farewell to a few spirits before he departs, feeling surprisingly amiable, and hints after what gifts they might like for when he returns. But still: he has a place to go, and it is better. It must be, the longing and memories ache too fiercely to be false, _surely_. He leaves the bathhouse at a fast walking pace, and runs when he reaches an open grass field nearby.

When his skin takes on its other form, he rises before he even means to, and flies like a river glittering in the light of the sun.

 

Which kindness would be greater? The uncertain one of ensuring that his river flows safe through all that surrounds it? Or to visit the girl that he remembers, and would not truly remember him, but might well still long?

He is dutiful to more than himself. That is something he has learned. Admittedly, it helps that the memory of her feels tied to his river. Sen – Chihiro, blundering and full of feeling, learning to be dutiful in her own turn, someone that he can with certainty and delight admire for her bravery.

As luck would have it, she is at his river.

She is the one who has raised it.

 

The magic is a thing of nearly dreaming. Her hair is unbound and shadows her hands as she works. She holds a glittering, protective, loving band of magic, and slowly, she loosens it. This does not break the magic, with the care she works with, but changes it.

Will this last? he wonders. Will they simply drain the Kohaku River again? The source is to the east from where Chihiro sits, far out of her sight, but the humans had managed to stifle him from there. But here and now, as Chihiro gives the magic she holds to the water, the river is as wide as he remembers it feeling, the banks restored almost to what he had once shrugged off and nestled against. Will he remain or will they? What is upstream, what do the humans there perceive as changed or as established?

But it is now even more fitting that he remains. Chihiro has given him the greatest possible gift. Again! First, the truth of his name, now his home and full self.

She recognises him, though he raises his head from the river still in the form that most speaks of power: his bearded, fanged mouth, the lengthy snout, the beginnings of the lithe length of his body. He couldn’t shed it, even to greet the woman who trailed her feet in the water, and he is pleased she recognises it. Well, he thinks, it might make more sense for a human to recognise this distinctive form rather than simply another human's face - and then he is deeply gratified when she also recognises that he has just smiled, because with a pleased little gasp, she smiles back.

“Haku…” she says, and the old, chopped-off form is not degrading. Most of those who found that name lingering on their lips were attempting cruelty against him by recalling his days of forced servitude.

“You remember?” Longing to be delicate, he swims close enough to rest his head beside her where she sits on the bank, and she makes up the difference for him by shifting over in an immediate sprawl, half on her side, and touching him with a light hand. She is getting muddy and doesn't care about the indignity, because she’s been waiting. “You remember the spirit world. And me.”

“I, um. Not quite?” Her eyes travel up and down his coils in the sunlight. He gleams, radiant, and can't even be pleasantly proud when he is so thankful. “I couldn’t remember all this!” She sounds scandalised as she waves at him. “But I remembered this river. I knew that when I was little, that was my best vacation. The closest I could get was booking a room nearby, doing some nature walks where I could, because so much had changed. But I wanted to see the river flow again. The closer I got, the more I remembered.”

He is not delicate. Were his muzzle to get anywhere near her, it would be too heavy, and his teeth would make her nervous. He is, however, of such a length that he can move onto the bank and circle her with his body. It is a tight circle, bringing them to almost touch by his doing instead of only hers. He could lie on the bank like this, settle there as if to keep them both still, but raises his head to her level. “I’m grateful.”

“I miss you now,” Chihiro blurts out. “I think … am I allowed to offer you food? I hope I don’t offend! But I’d like to talk to you again. Now that I know you again, I’ve missed you for _years_.”

"I understand, Chihiro." Saying her name makes him want the touch of her hand back. "But I'm not even hungry, I just want to stay. I just want... Would you be willing to take me to somewhere more private?"

 

There is a hotel he can follow her into. Like so many innkeepers and their workers, the staff are obsequious in their welcome, especially as they recognise power - if in a blurry way - and he concentrates on that instead of the many strange new trappings that tell him to turn back to the spirit world. These things are in their place, and he is with Chihiro, and there's the balance.

“I can’t believe you refused to turn human!” Chihiro hisses at him as they cross the lobby to the elevator. The doors indicate that it’s a roomy one, which is a blessing – it’s going to be difficult to curl up in there. He can shrink somewhat, but his renewed power makes it difficult.

Chihiro keeps a hand on him as he curls around her again, still tighter, parts of him now brushing her thighs. So many spirits would fall about laughing to see him like this, he thinks. And then he thinks mostly of how Chihiro wearing shorts, a towel wrapped around them so that the riverbank muddiness is hidden.

When they enter her room in the hotel, he grows again. But he doesn’t move much farther away from her. She removes the towel and begins to go to where there’s more water, the bathroom. Could he wait on her? Could she wait on him? They’re both bath servants, after all.

“You're smiling again, Haku?” she says. And her smile is back too.

He curls another loop around her. His tail - at least that can make a delicate move that is beyond his muzzle or his claws, the kind of light flick that moves to make suggestions to breezes – and so he brushes her cheek.

“I am thinking of celebration," he tells her. "I am thinking of missing you, too. It’s brightness within my heart, you know – your brightness, that comes out suddenly and disappears again, ordinary and extraordinary.”

“Do you think … that you could become … um, the other form? The one that looked human. You’re an amazing dragon, Haku! But…”

He wound himself tight enough to feel a little give in her soft thighs. He wants to warm there. “I can’t right now. The river is too close, too newly full of power. I apologise, Chihiro. This must be strange.”

She puts her hands on her hips and regards the wall, sight unseeing. “I’m not that afraid.” There is a kind of aggrieved resignation in her bearing as she looks to him again. “Do you know how strange people thought I was? I’ve made very good friends, and I think very few people find it something to hold against me, but there have been a lot of times where I accept things too easily. This is one of them!”

Undressing is left in her hands. He advises her to put her clothes in order – some unruly spirits can take advantage of skin-warm clothes for impersonation, if they’re not tidily put away. She laughs softly as she complies, piece by piece. There is delight beaming out of her, in the tremble of her knees that makes his mouth water, the way her movements will go from dreamily unhurried to jerky with excitement. There is a certain scent he has rarely smelled, but connections within him give him assurance of.

When she sits on the bed she wraps her arms around her legs, pulling them up to her chest. Kohaku River-god is Haku to her, and remembers being ungracious when he had little power and she had less. He sighs, hesitates, but presses his sharp-toothed muzzle to her to push her flat on the mattress, and is relieved that he has overestimated himself. Chihiro isn't hurt bit. That scent of her, earthy-sweet, grows stronger and gains more nuance. She is wet, and she wants him to split her open.

Chihiro captures him, an arm across his neck, drawing his scaled edges flat over her belly, letting his muzzle breathe hotly over her breasts. “I’m so glad. You’re still real and a dream and – you want to match me. Even like this, you want to hold and be held.”

Her hands begin to travel. Finding sensitivity in stroking his ears, combing her fingers through his hair, beard and mane, and running them along lips she can’t kiss. Certainly, they will kiss once he has the control to change forms. Her delight balloons, and he lets his tongue flicker out.

Shuddering, Chihiro’s arm tightens enough that it is a little uncomfortable. That delights him. He whips his tongue across the mounds of her breasts, able to be delicate with that too – tasting salt and her scent, feeling the puckering and tightening of her nipples. His tongue finds the hollow of her throat and the thud of hectic pulses in her neck.

She’s wet enough, now, he thinks. Instinct says it. he pulls away and Chihiro yelps indignantly at the strength that pops him out of her arms. Soon enough, however, she snickers as she watches him. It is difficult to get enough of himself on the bed to line up his unsheathed manhood with her womanhood. “I’m sorry,” she says, but there’s a deliriousness to her that makes him forgiving enough to consider that there was no trespass. Chihiro squirms her way down the bed, opening her legs yet wider and bending them so that there is space for his head and neck to curl up on the pillows, but his stiff manhood can breach her entrance.

“I hope this doesn’t hurt,” she confesses. Her arms wrap around his middle. He spasms, the ripple running through him.

It has happened before, union between god and mortal. He has magic enough to ensure there will be no real pain, however much larger he is than she is meant to take. Chihiro has magic enough to ensure no embarrassment. Will he please her, with what he has? It is slick and soft out of a clinging sheath, embedded in a scale-rough root. “Is that all right?” he gasps when the streaming tip of his manhood opens up the clinging heat of her hole.

“Um, a bit more.” There’s a very circumspect sound to it, and then she says, “Oh dear” even though he hasn’t moved yet. “Oh dear, oh damn it, I _am_ very strange… But Haku? Please. A bit more.”

Earthy, sweet, bitter-sour, her scent something he ought to taste. Later. For now he tries to ease in. It’s a work of slow, slow easing, enjoying the shudders of her belly as her tightness eases for him, feeling a delirious delight of his own when she giggles, tickled, at his own shudders – and it’s a work of scrambling, one claw catching in the mattress to give him leverage enough to shove in. Not all the way, a little at a time – just, faster. When he rolls his head to look at her beneath him, her face is red and shows signs of being asked a little too much. He doesn’t fit on this stupid bed. They should be elsewhere. The bathhouse. There is room for a god there. Or her own bedroom, private to her and then opened willingly to him, and he will be esily coaxed into a form that fits her better.

One leg goes around him, and with the other Chihiro digs a heel into the mattress and rocks against him. With more control on her side, the balance of strain and relief changes, and she moans. “Oh, Haku. Kohaku, the River…”

At last. Swollen inside her, she knows him better, she remembers the kindness of remembering his name. Instinct drives him to make a deep sound, low in him – and thus it reaches low inside her, the echo of it an uncontrolled shudder in Chihiro. Waves of pleasure pass in turn from her to him, a tightening and release that had both of them gasping. He tries it again - pressing down a little harder, too, so that Chihiro would have more leverage for the roll of her hips, and could rest her back a bit easier when she moans, too out of her head to keep moving. Another of his jerky, scrambled thrusts and she gasps with almost pleasure alone, as if it now feels much better in her soaked openness.

Chihiro comes with a muffled shriek, her whole body tightening on him. Haku follows that thread of brightness – it's the only thing that made sense.

 

She moves as if she is sore but satisfied. Chihiro pulls the mattress off the bed, as quietly as possible to be mindful of the rooms next door and below hers, then gets some extra blankets and pillows from a cupboard and spreads those on the floor around the mattress, though a little guilty about pulling everything in the room out of its place. This way, he can curl around her and let the tail of him trail on the floor without much discomfort.

“I hope I can see your other face again,” Chihiro says. But she smiles at him so wholeheartedly that he does not feel chastised. “But I hope we’ll do what we’ve just done again, too.”


End file.
